Marilyn Beardsley Heise

Perilous Pills Marilyn Beardsley Heise

Do you know that you can be harmed by some commonly-prescribed antibiotics? The author found it was true when she developed severe tendonitis after taking an antibiotic called Levaquin, prescribed by her doctor for a minor sinus infection. She found it was one of a class of drugs called fluoroquinolones that also includes Cipro, Avelox and many generics, and that they had caused injuries and psychological damage to hundreds of thousands of patients. As a journalist, she decided to investigate. What she found were heartbreaking tales from victims who had suffered adverse effects such as rapid heartbeat, neuropathy, pain, inability to walk, nightmares, anxiety, chronic fatigue, retinal damage, aortic aneurysm, and the most common: torn Achilles tendons. The author was driven to find out why these drugs are prescribed so frequently when they can cause such damage. She uncovered a messy story of profit over safety at Big Pharma, unreliable regulation at the FDA, hospitals that gave fluoroquinolones as preventatives instead of only for bacterial infections for which they were intended, pharmacies that took shortcuts around safety warnings, and industry-influenced doctors who over-prescribed these powerful medications which can cause disability or psychological impairment for life. Here is the largely untold story about fluoroquinolones and the unnecessary harm that they have caused. It has become the author's passion to increase awareness of the risks associated with taking these drugs and to generate change in a medical community that has perpetuated this decades-long travesty.